Specialty glass manufacturer Schott North America and the University of Scranton are set to receive $2.8 million in federal funds to research and develop the creation of a more powerful laser, reports Photonics.
The funds will allow Schott and the university to work toward building an exawatt laser. There is currently no exawatt laser in existance, although researchers at the Texas Petawatt Laser, now the world's most powerful laser, have plans to build one. A petawatt is 1 quadrillion-watts; an exawatt is equivalent to 1000 petawatts (1018 W). Europe's Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) project is also working to build a laser in the exawatt regime, with a goal to have it working in 2015.
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